Monday, June 4th, 2018
After a chill weekend with my host family filled with lots of food and snacks, hanging out and a daily nap, it was time to return to class this morning. Because many students' host families live further from campus, class starts at 9:00 am instead of 8:30, but I know some people still have to wake up a bit earlier to arrive on time. Personally, my host family's home is only a 15-minute drive from campus, but 30 with morning traffic, so I woke up around 7:45, we left around 8:15 and arrived a little before 8:45. The trip to campus is relatively convenient because my 5-year-old host sister, 靳李Jenny, attends school on campus at one of Sichuan University's two kindergartens very close to our classrooms. I think Dong laoshi paid careful attention to our likes and interests when picking them and my only desire was a family with a dog and a baby, which I got. However, I know many of my classmates have been matched based on their major/academic interests which is very useful for our independent research project.
When I arrived at our classroom, Dong laoshi was already there brewing coffee for us, and I got to catch up with everyone on their weekends with their new host families. Although we spent our weekends differently, it seemed as though being constantly full was something we all shared, which is just the Chinese way of treating guests. I think I heard the phrase "多吃" ("eat more") about 100 times in my first 48 hours here, which is something to get used to. Our normal language class consisted mostly of all 9 of us describing our weekends in Chinese and learning the different words from everyone's stories, which is a nice way to learn everyday vocabulary that isn't in our textbook. After a 20 minute break, we were back in class learning more and studying lesson 9, our final lesson, which is a little sad.
At 12, we were released from class and ended up wasting time at Burger King for lunch before returning at 2pm for our language partner time. Before, I would definitely get stuck in the habit of mostly listening to the interesting facts and stories my language partner would tell me, but recently, and especially since spending a weekend fully immersed, I found our conversation consisted of more of my stories and me talking. By 3pm, I returned to our classroom building to meet my host mom and to retrieve my host sister from the kindergarten. After a few snacks and a mini vocabulary review session with my host mom later, we called a Didi and went home, but not before buying fruit from a market right outside of the housing complex. By then, it was about 4pm and I was told to 休息 (rest) until dinner at 6:30pm.
When dinner was ready, 靳李 was sure to come pounding on the door shouting "泰勒，起床了！" ("Taylor, get out of bed!") which was followed by a quick chase around the house and lots of squealing. After dinner, I began to study and my host mom gave me a practice 听写 (dictation) to prepare for the one tomorrow morning. Then, I took a break from studying to sit with 靳李 to watch a web show where the girls advertised these mini squishy toys that were little food items that basically stretched to consume one another. The tomato into the hamburger. The slab of butter into the piece of toast. You get the picture. After watching a few episodes of this, I returned to write this blog post and chat some more with my host dad about life and his general opinion on things. I've even started writing in a little notebook, so I can remember everything. It should make for interesting research/family history. Anyways, thanks for reading!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment